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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On July 30 2025 15:42 Argonauta wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2025 06:49 WombaT wrote:On July 29 2025 23:24 Charoisaur wrote:On July 29 2025 23:05 WombaT wrote:On July 29 2025 16:16 Argonauta wrote:On July 29 2025 08:32 WombaT wrote:On July 29 2025 07:43 Argonauta wrote:On July 29 2025 06:57 Mizenhauer wrote:On July 29 2025 05:51 Argonauta wrote:
I guess we have quickly forgotten that Maru won Dallas, the single other international offline event of 2025. (Im not counting Zagora due to its low prize pool and lack of koreans).
I didn't forget anything. Once again, Maru his furthered his case as GOAT, only to be upstaged by Serral who continues to push past him. It's a very peculiar situation. After blizzard pull out and GSL shrunk I am not sure if any tournament is meaningful anymore for the GOAT conversation. I think it is still pretty meaningful, it’s just testing different things. Who can best manage a shrunken overall tournament scene, with fewer real teams, and peak for the one big mega tournament? If you’re a top contender, how do you balance needing practice against players on your level, versus potentially giving too much away to your direct rivals? I don’t weight recent times as highly because things are shrinking, but it does at the same time bring that element into play. In this specific domain, Serral is clearly on another planet. I genuinely don’t know how he does it, I’d love an interviewer to deep dive a bit! Going into EWC, Serral skipped RSL, and both Reynor and Clem went to Korea, which had people including myself worrying how he’d prep. Everyone in the EWC field who could conceivably win the tournament was over in Korea going in. So either he just kept in shape versus players at his level by just eating the ping disadvantage, or he cooked up some other practice regimen where he was able to arrive at EWC in peak condition despite not regularly playing the handful of players who can hang with him regularly. Either way I’d love to actually know! I can’t speculate too much without knowing specifics, I have a hunch that just in terms of an ability to work things out solo, Serral is absolutely without peer. Aside from the aforementioned, there’s little scraps to feed on. I’m not sure Reynor has managed to beat him since they became teammates. So in the one case he’s properly workshopping with someone else, the result is they don’t close the gap to him, he takes their ideas and makes himself even stronger. Usually being teammates narrows the gap based on familiarity and the ability to counter known tendencies, Serral seems to have just flipped that. I don’t think, for example that $o$ famously 3-0s Maru if they weren’t teammates. Yeah how Serral can maintain such a level gap wit the rest of the competitions in a day and age in which everybody seems to go half gas with SC2 practice is an interesting topic, albeit irrelevant for the goat conversation. EDIT: which pros can have the luxury to keep practicing SC2 looking at the unknowns of the next year? I think only the one that have won 200.000 dollars can do so. Sure but Serral was also doing this way back in 2018 as well. It’s not a purely recent phenomenon. The natural flipside of this particular coin is with somewhat similar conditions, Serral created a gap to the field that he’s managed to maintain. I don't think his dominance from 2018-22 was the same as from 23 to 25. Back then there were lots of players that could occasionally take bo5/bo7s from him like Inno, Zest, soO, Stats, TY, Cure, Dark, Rogue, Classic, Maru and of course Reynor and Clem. I know you singled out 2018 but the sample size in that year wasn't really high with him only playing 2 tournaments with the toughest competition and even then his games weren't as dominant as today, with Stats for example pushing him to G7 while being ahead in the series and winning the long macro game At best he was genuinely dominant, at worst he maybe didn’t peak for and rthe big WC events, but his overall season win rate was still the best going for a bunch of those years But it wasn't? Maru has a comparable % but much more games in 2018. Dark has an outright better rate than Serral in 2019 both in % and in number of games.
Smaller sample size, but that’s a pretty big difference. 10% ballpark is the difference between being a GSL contender and someone who reliably, but not always qualified for GSL and might sometimes make the Ro16.
Point taken on Dark and his fantastic 2019, I still think Serral tops those tables every other year. Although I’d have to recheck, been a while since I looked!
So I still think my observation is broadly accurate.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On July 30 2025 14:52 sc2turtlepants wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2025 00:45 WombaT wrote:
If my theory is correct, and I think it has some legs, Serral and others were able to hang with something approximating a Kespa era team. Even if we concede that JAGW weren’t training with the absolute full intensity of the Proleague days, that’s still a hell of a practice environment to still have.
Not every pro-Serral point is a dig at other players, I just think his ability to drop off the radar and turn up and wreck things seemingly solo is quite remarkable.
People were worried going in when Serral skipped RSL, and Clem and Reynor went to Korea, meaning the entire field of contenders were all in Korea, and Serral was in Europe doing, whatever it is he does. I must say even I felt this was dicey, I mean how do you get that quality practice in?
I’d be fascinated to know his process if nothing else, a lot is mystery. It was very interesting when Lambo and crew talked at length about how they prepared Reynor for a World Championship (IIRC his first). Don’t have a Terran who can play like Maru in Europe? OK just play Archon mode against a couple of solid European Terran pros to approximate it.
I’ve never really heard how Serral preps in much detail, but whatever he does it does seem pretty effective I've often thought that how he came out of the Finnish backcountry swinging in 2018 has never been given enough attention during discussions like this. Koreaboos drone on about the end of Kespa the year before, ignoring how the skills they had obtained were still relevant a year later, but this guy who only gets practice against "categorically inferior foreigners" and never saw the inside of a teamhouse is able to bop Maru, Stats, Rogue, Inno, Classic and Dark somehow? And take the WC? That to me is almost a bigger story than how he's been able to stay at the top of the scene for over half the game's life at this point, and his performance last week on a rough patch with all his top EU practice buddies off in Korea just brings the same question back up. You can say one thing for Serral, he cooks
Yeah absolutely agreed.
Cook that boy does!
Another underrated element is what a gigantic jump he made. He went from promising EU pro to ‘the guy’. It took Clem a while to crack international tournaments, and Reynor never found Serral’s consistency.
Others have done it faster, but few have managed to stay at the top of the mountain remotely as long
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On July 30 2025 19:58 Argonauta wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2025 18:11 PremoBeats wrote:On July 30 2025 18:04 Argonauta wrote:On July 30 2025 17:34 PremoBeats wrote:On July 30 2025 16:40 Argonauta wrote:On July 30 2025 16:26 PremoBeats wrote:On July 30 2025 15:42 Argonauta wrote:On July 30 2025 06:49 WombaT wrote:On July 29 2025 23:24 Charoisaur wrote:On July 29 2025 23:05 WombaT wrote:
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Sure but Serral was also doing this way back in 2018 as well. It’s not a purely recent phenomenon.
The natural flipside of this particular coin is with somewhat similar conditions, Serral created a gap to the field that he’s managed to maintain. I don't think his dominance from 2018-22 was the same as from 23 to 25. Back then there were lots of players that could occasionally take bo5/bo7s from him like Inno, Zest, soO, Stats, TY, Cure, Dark, Rogue, Classic, Maru and of course Reynor and Clem. I know you singled out 2018 but the sample size in that year wasn't really high with him only playing 2 tournaments with the toughest competition and even then his games weren't as dominant as today, with Stats for example pushing him to G7 while being ahead in the series and winning the long macro game At best he was genuinely dominant, at worst he maybe didn’t peak for the big WC events, but his overall season win rate was still the best going for a bunch of those years But it wasn't? Maru has a comparable % but much more games in 2018. Dark has an outright better rate than Serral in 2019 both in % and in number of games. Comparable? 11% more by Serral is not comparable, especially not at that level. And you haven't even addressed the issue that Maru played a lot more lower tier Koreans in qualifiers. If you control for that that fact, the discrepancy is widened by 2-7% depending on the player and year. Dark's as well as all Korean's numbers can be controlled under the same concept. True, I have not controlled for that specifically, but I have controlled indirectly by setting offline matches only. And if you look at the list of matches, Serral scores victories vs Taeja True and Trust (one each). Whereas Maru scores a win vs Forte and perhaps another vs Patience? (not sure if Patience will enter your list), so if we control for that Maru will be in the winning side. And I think that % of difference is offset by the fact that Maru won 27 matches, which is the total of matches played by Serral (both won and lost) as the bigger number of times you play the harder it is to maintain a high % rate. Serral True rank 30 Trust rank 67 TaeJa rank 60 Maru Leenock Rank 41 Forte Rank 56 Patience Rank 57 Dear Rank 27 Keen rank 52, 2 matches My methodology was to exclude games with top 40-80 and lower than top 80 and then calculate win rates, so 2 new categories. True and Dear wouldn't have fallen into that category. But Trust, TaeJa, Leenock, Forte, Patience and 2 Keen matches would have been corrected for. If we want to be super precise you only look only at matches versus Koreans you leave out 1 win and 1 loss versus Serral in Maru's calculation Meaning Maru goes from 27-10 to 28-11, which means another win rates decrease. And no. You can't simply assume that Serral's win rate would drop if he played more matches. That is not how you control for such differences  That is a bit odd becasue Keen was very good in TvT in fact it scores 1 Win and 1 loss vs Maru, just not very active overall. That is why I did to not do so (it creates more biases than it resolves). For including Serral vs Maru in the Maru score true! I forgot that one. But yes, you can assume the more games you play the harder it is to maintain a high % rate. In the particular case of SC2 is because: 1) the more you play the more exposed your play style is. 2) because most of the tournaments are bracket style and not league style, the more you play the higher you go in those brackets, the difficulty of winning increases. But coming back to the overall point. Serral was not superior than its peers in 2018-2019. Who are his peers in this context? And how do you define superior? The thing is that you can't ignore that Serral played more volatile Bo1 ZvZ (50% of his losses offline) and go on to say that his win rate would be more negatively affected if he played more games. If we want to control for context fine, but then apply it consistently. Then rather also include online matches and control for matches against <40. That way your sample size is bigger, while still getting rid of lower ranked players. His peers are the other players of sc2 that qualified for the tournaments they played SC2 at. I dont understand why you want to perceive ZvZ as an special match up that has to be treated any different than PvP or TvT (or any non mirror really). Superior in the context of this thread is to be perceive as unbeatable by a given narrative. In the same way nobody says Dark was superior than his peers in 2019 I dont see why you want to make the case for Serral in 2018 and 2019.
So a couple of 20 players? I'd say he was the most dominant of them, if we sum up 2018 and 2019. Him and Maru have the most wins (ignoring all region locks), but Serral needed less tournaments to achieve the same win count, which means he was more efficient (5 out of 18 versus 5 out of 12). His average place as well as his match win rate are better as well.
Personally, I wouldn't equate superior to "perceived unbeatable". If that is what is being said, I agree. Serral was not perceived as unbeatable in that time frame.
I argue that Bo1 matches are much more volatile than any other form of match. As Serral has two of those which make up 50% of his losses and Maru none, controlling for that wouldn't be irresponsible.
On top, ZvZ is considered the most volatile of the 6 possible matchups for various reasons (how much does a single mistake swing the game as in bad bane detonations, all-in friendliness, snowballing effect of Zerg economy).
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United States1906 Posts
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On July 31 2025 00:00 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2025 19:58 Argonauta wrote:On July 30 2025 18:11 PremoBeats wrote:On July 30 2025 18:04 Argonauta wrote:On July 30 2025 17:34 PremoBeats wrote:On July 30 2025 16:40 Argonauta wrote:On July 30 2025 16:26 PremoBeats wrote:On July 30 2025 15:42 Argonauta wrote:On July 30 2025 06:49 WombaT wrote:On July 29 2025 23:24 Charoisaur wrote:
[quote]
I don't think his dominance from 2018-22 was the same as from 23 to 25.
Back then there were lots of players that could occasionally take bo5/bo7s from him like Inno, Zest, soO, Stats, TY, Cure, Dark, Rogue, Classic, Maru and of course Reynor and Clem.
I know you singled out 2018 but the sample size in that year wasn't really high with him only playing 2 tournaments with the toughest competition and even then his games weren't as dominant as today, with Stats for example pushing him to G7 while being ahead in the series and winning the long macro game
At best he was genuinely dominant, at worst he maybe didn’t peak for the big WC events, but his overall season win rate was still the best going for a bunch of those years But it wasn't? Maru has a comparable % but much more games in 2018. Dark has an outright better rate than Serral in 2019 both in % and in number of games. Comparable? 11% more by Serral is not comparable, especially not at that level. And you haven't even addressed the issue that Maru played a lot more lower tier Koreans in qualifiers. If you control for that that fact, the discrepancy is widened by 2-7% depending on the player and year. Dark's as well as all Korean's numbers can be controlled under the same concept. True, I have not controlled for that specifically, but I have controlled indirectly by setting offline matches only. And if you look at the list of matches, Serral scores victories vs Taeja True and Trust (one each). Whereas Maru scores a win vs Forte and perhaps another vs Patience? (not sure if Patience will enter your list), so if we control for that Maru will be in the winning side. And I think that % of difference is offset by the fact that Maru won 27 matches, which is the total of matches played by Serral (both won and lost) as the bigger number of times you play the harder it is to maintain a high % rate. Serral True rank 30 Trust rank 67 TaeJa rank 60 Maru Leenock Rank 41 Forte Rank 56 Patience Rank 57 Dear Rank 27 Keen rank 52, 2 matches My methodology was to exclude games with top 40-80 and lower than top 80 and then calculate win rates, so 2 new categories. True and Dear wouldn't have fallen into that category. But Trust, TaeJa, Leenock, Forte, Patience and 2 Keen matches would have been corrected for. If we want to be super precise you only look only at matches versus Koreans you leave out 1 win and 1 loss versus Serral in Maru's calculation Meaning Maru goes from 27-10 to 28-11, which means another win rates decrease. And no. You can't simply assume that Serral's win rate would drop if he played more matches. That is not how you control for such differences That is a bit odd becasue Keen was very good in TvT in fact it scores 1 Win and 1 loss vs Maru, just not very active overall. That is why I did to not do so (it creates more biases than it resolves). For including Serral vs Maru in the Maru score true! I forgot that one. But yes, you can assume the more games you play the harder it is to maintain a high % rate. In the particular case of SC2 is because: 1) the more you play the more exposed your play style is. 2) because most of the tournaments are bracket style and not league style, the more you play the higher you go in those brackets, the difficulty of winning increases. But coming back to the overall point. Serral was not superior than its peers in 2018-2019. Who are his peers in this context? And how do you define superior? The thing is that you can't ignore that Serral played more volatile Bo1 ZvZ (50% of his losses offline) and go on to say that his win rate would be more negatively affected if he played more games. If we want to control for context fine, but then apply it consistently. Then rather also include online matches and control for matches against <40. That way your sample size is bigger, while still getting rid of lower ranked players. His peers are the other players of sc2 that qualified for the tournaments they played SC2 at. I dont understand why you want to perceive ZvZ as an special match up that has to be treated any different than PvP or TvT (or any non mirror really). Superior in the context of this thread is to be perceive as unbeatable by a given narrative. In the same way nobody says Dark was superior than his peers in 2019 I dont see why you want to make the case for Serral in 2018 and 2019. So a couple of 20 players? I'd say he was the most dominant of them, if we sum up 2018 and 2019. Him and Maru have the most wins (ignoring all region locks), but Serral needed less tournaments to achieve the same win count, which means he was more efficient (5 out of 18 versus 5 out of 12). His average place as well as his match win rate are better as well. Personally, I wouldn't equate superior to "perceived unbeatable". If that is what is being said, I agree. Serral was not perceived as unbeatable in that time frame. I argue that Bo1 matches are much more volatile than any other form of match. As Serral has two of those which make up 50% of his losses and Maru none, controlling for that wouldn't be irresponsible. On top, ZvZ is considered the most volatile of the 6 possible matchups for various reasons (how much does a single mistake swing the game as in bad bane detonations, all-in friendliness, snowballing effect of Zerg economy).
You are rigth bo1 is more volatile, that i give you. ZvZ is not more volatile than PvP (and even then, a dominant player should also been dominant in their own mirror so I will also not buy it if we were talking of a toss player) that I dont agree.
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On July 28 2025 06:45 dedede wrote:
You get people casually saying Serral has been “dominating since 2018”? He’s clearly dominated from mid 2023-2025, sure, but look at the 2018-2021 results, how was he more dominant than Rogue or Maru, especially with other Zergs like Dark and Reynor winning world championships too?
Tournament results are noise, SC2 is a game of immense luck, and bracket luck, in none of those tournaments that Serral didnt win, he wasn't the favoured to win it, yes he has been dominating since 2018, if you put all the best players in a league where everyone plays everyone, Serral wins that league nearly every time, it was just a matter of time for him to become the winningest player.
I still recall in GSL vs the World, when they asked Inno if he was confident going up vs Serral, he said he was, until he heard Serral set the MMR record for the Korean ladder (in a couple weeks?), in the 2 weeks prior Inno had 6-1'd Rogue or something of the sort, that's the moment I knew SC2 was about to change.
Serral is just a better player than any other player who touched SC2, his statistics are just far far better, it's no contest.
Serral is more dominant than Magnus Carlsen, far more, but there's an inability in the community to see the obvious, the mental gymnastics started 6 years ago, with "saving builds for GSL".
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On August 13 2025 04:25 LostUsername100 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2025 06:45 dedede wrote:
You get people casually saying Serral has been “dominating since 2018”? He’s clearly dominated from mid 2023-2025, sure, but look at the 2018-2021 results, how was he more dominant than Rogue or Maru, especially with other Zergs like Dark and Reynor winning world championships too? Tournament results are noise, SC2 is a game of immense luck, and bracket luck, in none of those tournaments that Serral didnt win, he wasn't the favoured to win it, yes he has been dominating since 2018, if you put all the best players in a league where everyone plays everyone, Serral wins that league nearly every time, it was just a matter of time for him to become the winningest player.
That's revisionist history, Serral really wasn't the favorite in every tournament in 2018-2021, when Maru, Dark or Trap had their insane streaks even the biggest Serral fans out of the casters were putting them over Serral as tournament favorite.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On August 13 2025 05:07 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2025 04:25 LostUsername100 wrote:On July 28 2025 06:45 dedede wrote:
You get people casually saying Serral has been “dominating since 2018”? He’s clearly dominated from mid 2023-2025, sure, but look at the 2018-2021 results, how was he more dominant than Rogue or Maru, especially with other Zergs like Dark and Reynor winning world championships too? Tournament results are noise, SC2 is a game of immense luck, and bracket luck, in none of those tournaments that Serral didnt win, he wasn't the favoured to win it, yes he has been dominating since 2018, if you put all the best players in a league where everyone plays everyone, Serral wins that league nearly every time, it was just a matter of time for him to become the winningest player. That's revisionist history, Serral really wasn't the favorite in every tournament in 2018-2021, when Maru, Dark or Trap had their insane streaks even the biggest Serral fans out of the casters were putting them over Serral as tournament favorite.
I dunno about that, we’d need to see the bookmaker’s odds and I haven’t been able to source them.
Just because he didn’t win x event doesn’t mean he wasn’t the favourite going in. I’m a massive fan of Trap but I’d still have always felt Serral was the more likely to win any given tournament they were both in.
Maru for a time, sure. And Dark or Rogue when firing were absolutely on his tier, but I don’t think were considered better bets
If anything it feels you’re retrospectively putting results over who was the favourite actually going into a tournament.
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On August 13 2025 07:49 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2025 05:07 Charoisaur wrote:On August 13 2025 04:25 LostUsername100 wrote:On July 28 2025 06:45 dedede wrote:
You get people casually saying Serral has been “dominating since 2018”? He’s clearly dominated from mid 2023-2025, sure, but look at the 2018-2021 results, how was he more dominant than Rogue or Maru, especially with other Zergs like Dark and Reynor winning world championships too? Tournament results are noise, SC2 is a game of immense luck, and bracket luck, in none of those tournaments that Serral didnt win, he wasn't the favoured to win it, yes he has been dominating since 2018, if you put all the best players in a league where everyone plays everyone, Serral wins that league nearly every time, it was just a matter of time for him to become the winningest player. That's revisionist history, Serral really wasn't the favorite in every tournament in 2018-2021, when Maru, Dark or Trap had their insane streaks even the biggest Serral fans out of the casters were putting them over Serral as tournament favorite. I dunno about that, we’d need to see the bookmaker’s odds and I haven’t been able to source them. Just because he didn’t win x event doesn’t mean he wasn’t the favourite going in. I’m a massive fan of Trap but I’d still have always felt Serral was the more likely to win any given tournament they were both in. Maru for a time, sure. And Dark or Rogue when firing were absolutely on his tier, but I don’t think were considered better bets If anything it feels you’re retrospectively putting results over who was the favourite actually going into a tournament.
Agreed. The only person to match Serral in any relevant statistic in that time frame for some time probably was Rogue in the direct record. He had Serral's number for a couple of matches in 2021 in a roughly 2 month period, but other than that, Serral had better statistics than all mentioned players from 2018 to 2021.
That means average place in tournaments, overall match win rates, direct match records versus these players and most importantly tournament win percentage (of course without region locks).
The bookie odds would be interesting on that, but tbh I don't see how Serral wouldn't be the favorite according to these statistics (or at least having the highest average, even if he was a close 2nd to another player in one or the other tourney).
I look at it like this: People bring up that at certain points in time, other players were better than Serral. And, yeah, in a narrow sense that’s true - if you pick the right month or year, someone else might have been #1. But here’s the thing: that’s not the full picture.
Serral wasn’t just great in bursts, he was the strongest - or at the very least the second-strongest - for extended stretches, year after year. So if you want to attack his case, you can’t just point to one guy. You need Player A for 2018, Player B for 2021, maybe Player C for 2023. You have to combine multiple players just to chip away at him, because there’s no single rival who was better for the same length of time. In his slumpiest year (2021), he still had better results than 99% of pros ever achieved.
And that’s the difference. If you want to make the same kind of argument for anyone else, it falls apart. Their peak might be higher for a short while, sure. But then they fall off, and you need to swap in someone else to cover the rest of the years. Serral’s case doesn’t need patchwork - it stands on its own. Even in seasons where someone else took a few points from him, he was still right there, still winning, still deep in the biggest tournaments.
That’s why, when you look at it as a standalone career, his argument is the strongest. The others need a relay team to keep up with what he did alone.
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On August 13 2025 07:49 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2025 05:07 Charoisaur wrote:On August 13 2025 04:25 LostUsername100 wrote:On July 28 2025 06:45 dedede wrote:
You get people casually saying Serral has been “dominating since 2018”? He’s clearly dominated from mid 2023-2025, sure, but look at the 2018-2021 results, how was he more dominant than Rogue or Maru, especially with other Zergs like Dark and Reynor winning world championships too? Tournament results are noise, SC2 is a game of immense luck, and bracket luck, in none of those tournaments that Serral didnt win, he wasn't the favoured to win it, yes he has been dominating since 2018, if you put all the best players in a league where everyone plays everyone, Serral wins that league nearly every time, it was just a matter of time for him to become the winningest player. That's revisionist history, Serral really wasn't the favorite in every tournament in 2018-2021, when Maru, Dark or Trap had their insane streaks even the biggest Serral fans out of the casters were putting them over Serral as tournament favorite. I dunno about that, we’d need to see the bookmaker’s odds and I haven’t been able to source them. Just because he didn’t win x event doesn’t mean he wasn’t the favourite going in. I’m a massive fan of Trap but I’d still have always felt Serral was the more likely to win any given tournament they were both in. Maru for a time, sure. And Dark or Rogue when firing were absolutely on his tier, but I don’t think were considered better bets If anything it feels you’re retrospectively putting results over who was the favourite actually going into a tournament.
It's what casters said during that time. I'm going not back through VODs to dig their statements up but looking at results I don't see why it's hard to believe they were the favorite. They objectively had better results than Serral over a reasonable period (~6 months-1year)
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On August 13 2025 04:25 LostUsername100 wrote:
I still recall in GSL vs the World, when they asked Inno if he was confident going up vs Serral, he said he was, until he heard Serral set the MMR record for the Korean ladder (in a couple weeks?), in the 2 weeks prior Inno had 6-1'd Rogue or something of the sort, that's the moment I knew SC2 was about to change.
I'm very interested in seeing this clip. Do you happen to have a link?
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On August 13 2025 14:54 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2025 07:49 WombaT wrote:On August 13 2025 05:07 Charoisaur wrote:On August 13 2025 04:25 LostUsername100 wrote:On July 28 2025 06:45 dedede wrote:
You get people casually saying Serral has been “dominating since 2018”? He’s clearly dominated from mid 2023-2025, sure, but look at the 2018-2021 results, how was he more dominant than Rogue or Maru, especially with other Zergs like Dark and Reynor winning world championships too? Tournament results are noise, SC2 is a game of immense luck, and bracket luck, in none of those tournaments that Serral didnt win, he wasn't the favoured to win it, yes he has been dominating since 2018, if you put all the best players in a league where everyone plays everyone, Serral wins that league nearly every time, it was just a matter of time for him to become the winningest player. That's revisionist history, Serral really wasn't the favorite in every tournament in 2018-2021, when Maru, Dark or Trap had their insane streaks even the biggest Serral fans out of the casters were putting them over Serral as tournament favorite. I dunno about that, we’d need to see the bookmaker’s odds and I haven’t been able to source them. Just because he didn’t win x event doesn’t mean he wasn’t the favourite going in. I’m a massive fan of Trap but I’d still have always felt Serral was the more likely to win any given tournament they were both in. Maru for a time, sure. And Dark or Rogue when firing were absolutely on his tier, but I don’t think were considered better bets If anything it feels you’re retrospectively putting results over who was the favourite actually going into a tournament. It's what casters said during that time. I'm going not back through VODs to dig their statements up but looking at results I don't see why it's hard to believe they were the favorite. They objectively had better results than Serral over a reasonable period (~6 months-1year)
Some casters were already declaring Serral the GOAT in like, 2018, they’ve got their biases and favourites like anyone else. Or sometimes they’re going off vibes and intangibles. ‘I know x has bad results recently, but they always show up on the big stage, so they’re my pick.’ Sometimes they’re right, those intangibles do matter for sure, but that wouldn’t be how I’d pick the ‘favourite’ for a tourney.
I long felt Artosis kinda overrated Koreans versus Serral for quite some time, despite evidence to the contrary, although not egregiously, and I’m not talking your Maru/Dark/Rogue types, but players a little lower that Serral was routinely smashing. On the flipside, I felt many foreign-based casters overrated Reynor versus Koreans for quite a while too. Or Clem for that matter. If you were going just off casts, you’d assume they were posting Serral-like numbers, rather than numbers more typical of the ‘average’ S-class player.
I really don’t recall Trap ever being the favourite unless Gemini was involved. The Protoss HopeTM and amongst the favourites, absolutely. So basically herO for the past few years until Classic stepped it up.
It’d be interesting to have data on what the players thought at the time, they’re privy to all this stuff first-hand, and loads of stuff we can’t see. Alas I don’t have time machine to find out!
So I figured we at least got the bookies to look at Chat GPT admitted it had a nightmare trying to source from whatever betting markets, also there’s a lot of tables I can’t just copy paste into here.
Anyway what I got was largely what I’d expected. I’ll note I skimmed and didn’t super deep-dive:
1. Serral was not always the favourite. Maru was the favourite for Kato 2019 for example, and understandably so
2. He was the favourite most often though, and his average given odds are the best.
Even though the answer is often no, as Premo points out, we’re asking things now that aren’t even questions asked of other players in the first place. Any of ‘were they the outright best player?’, ‘did they have the best calendar year?’, or ‘were they the favourite for tournaments?’, every year across a multi-year span aren’t even on the table for basically anyone else.
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Trap won 6 premier tournaments + NeXT Winter which also had a stacked field during a time span of 7 months. During those runs he beat everyone including winning bo7s against Serral, Reynor and Stats. He was by all means the strongest player in the scene during that period.
Serral btw back then had a weaker phase and didn't win a single tournament during those 7 months (being knocked out twice by Trap). It's absolutely revisionist history to say Serral was still stronger at that time
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On August 13 2025 22:02 Charoisaur wrote:
Trap won 6 premier tournaments + NeXT Winter which also had a stacked field during a time span of 7 months. During those runs he beat everyone including winning bo7s against Serral, Reynor and Stats. He was by all means the strongest player in the scene during that period.
Serral btw back then had a weaker phase and didn't win a single tournament during those 7 months (being knocked out twice by Trap). It's absolutely revisionist history to say Serral was still stronger at that time
Who said Serral was stronger? One assesses favourites for tournaments blind going in, one assesses who was stronger over a period afterwards.
Trap was in a rich vein of form, my vague recollection was he was considered amongst the favourites, but not the favourite and some people thought he was on a hot streak that surely couldn’t keep going (but kept going).
Indeed, I argued at the time, and have argued since that Trap was unbelievably underrated in that span, people would still mention Parting as if they were remotely close, and subsequently I think Trap’s results stack up very well versus post-military herO, and he deserved more credit for them.
Trap was my favourite player all through this span, and really the only player I’ve ever truly rooted for since Liquid HerO, I’m well aware of his results, indeed the quoted segment on Trap’s Liquipedia is mine.
Is the first player to reach at least top 8 in GSL Code S ten times consecutively.
Trap was also the first player to break Wombat’s LawTM in like 4-5 years or something silly. It was a joke law initially but it actually held for a preposterous amount of time. ‘No Protoss can win a weekender tournament if they have to play more than one Zerg in playoffs.’ Which Trap eventually broke by beating Reynor and Serral back-to-back (can’t remember the order) in IIRC Dreamhack Last Chance, but I may be wrong on the specific tournament.
I’m well aware of Trap’s accomplishments, indeed more so than most and I think they’re massively underrated.
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It's a good law and made sense for thr time. But it's got to do with which race is favoured late game, and if trap is just slaying zergs in the late game it'd make sense if he were the one to break it.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
The law didn’t really concern game phases, but Toss workshopping new builds to kill a Zerg, only to lose to the next one who’d had a chance to observe the latest new build(s) and counter it.
When soO won his WC, Stats had shown this cute prism + stalker pressure opener, to great effect. soO smacked that down. Zest had some deep WC runs where he’d shown up with a pocket build, beat a top Zerg and then get hard-countered by the next one. Etc
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On August 13 2025 22:32 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2025 22:02 Charoisaur wrote:
Trap won 6 premier tournaments + NeXT Winter which also had a stacked field during a time span of 7 months. During those runs he beat everyone including winning bo7s against Serral, Reynor and Stats. He was by all means the strongest player in the scene during that period.
Serral btw back then had a weaker phase and didn't win a single tournament during those 7 months (being knocked out twice by Trap). It's absolutely revisionist history to say Serral was still stronger at that time
Who said Serral was stronger? One assesses favourites for tournaments blind going in, one assesses who was stronger over a period afterwards.
If Trap wins 7 tournaments in a period in which Serral wins 0 tournaments, then he should be the favorite over Serral in the next given tournament, no?
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On August 14 2025 00:35 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2025 22:32 WombaT wrote:On August 13 2025 22:02 Charoisaur wrote:
Trap won 6 premier tournaments + NeXT Winter which also had a stacked field during a time span of 7 months. During those runs he beat everyone including winning bo7s against Serral, Reynor and Stats. He was by all means the strongest player in the scene during that period.
Serral btw back then had a weaker phase and didn't win a single tournament during those 7 months (being knocked out twice by Trap). It's absolutely revisionist history to say Serral was still stronger at that time
Who said Serral was stronger? One assesses favourites for tournaments blind going in, one assesses who was stronger over a period afterwards. If Trap wins 7 tournaments in a period in which Serral wins 0 tournaments, then he should be the favorite over Serral in the next given tournament, no?
Should somebody be the favourite, and them actually being the favourite don’t always match up.
I have quite good memories of this period, being a Protoss lad, and being a Trap fan of like, continually saying Trap was being slept on. Why I did that? Because many posters absolutely were sleeping on him, I remember it quite well.
One, completely understandable reason why at that time was, when it came to the big final(s) in GSL he got butchered in PvZ, and there were many good Zergs around. And, with his Super Tournament wins, Serral and Reynor weren’t there.
Excellent PvP, the best PvT, and a decent PvZ that sometimes faltered against elite ZvPers. The latter is kind of a problem if, at the time the field of consistent tournament contenders and winners is stacked with Zerg.
Trap absolutely answered those questions on his run, he was generally not the tournament favourite actually going into any of them though.
Results absolutely count overall as well, but there’s a ‘form is temporary, class is permanent’ element to favourites too, especially at the big events. Rogue could be posting mediocre results, but it’s a WC, it’s Rogue. Maru had a pretty atrocious 2025 but people still felt he was a champ contender for EWC. I actually think he showed that some of that faith was merited, but made a few flubs against Cure.
Which was a bit of a shame, the two biggest ‘unknowns’ I wanted to see, namely what Maru could bring to the table, and if Clem’s PvT could really cut it in a high stakes, WC tier playoff match, I didn’t get to.
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On August 14 2025 08:00 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2025 00:35 Charoisaur wrote:On August 13 2025 22:32 WombaT wrote:On August 13 2025 22:02 Charoisaur wrote:
Trap won 6 premier tournaments + NeXT Winter which also had a stacked field during a time span of 7 months. During those runs he beat everyone including winning bo7s against Serral, Reynor and Stats. He was by all means the strongest player in the scene during that period.
Serral btw back then had a weaker phase and didn't win a single tournament during those 7 months (being knocked out twice by Trap). It's absolutely revisionist history to say Serral was still stronger at that time
Who said Serral was stronger? One assesses favourites for tournaments blind going in, one assesses who was stronger over a period afterwards. If Trap wins 7 tournaments in a period in which Serral wins 0 tournaments, then he should be the favorite over Serral in the next given tournament, no? Should somebody be the favourite, and them actually being the favourite don’t always match up. I have quite good memories of this period, being a Protoss lad, and being a Trap fan of like, continually saying Trap was being slept on. Why I did that? Because many posters absolutely were sleeping on him, I remember it quite well. One, completely understandable reason why at that time was, when it came to the big final(s) in GSL he got butchered in PvZ, and there were many good Zergs around. And, with his Super Tournament wins, Serral and Reynor weren’t there. Excellent PvP, the best PvT, and a decent PvZ that sometimes faltered against elite ZvPers. The latter is kind of a problem if, at the time the field of consistent tournament contenders and winners is stacked with Zerg. Trap absolutely answered those questions on his run, he was generally not the tournament favourite actually going into any of them though. Results absolutely count overall as well, but there’s a ‘form is temporary, class is permanent’ element to favourites too, especially at the big events. Rogue could be posting mediocre results, but it’s a WC, it’s Rogue. Maru had a pretty atrocious 2025 but people still felt he was a champ contender for EWC. I actually think he showed that some of that faith was merited, but made a few flubs against Cure. Which was a bit of a shame, the two biggest ‘unknowns’ I wanted to see, namely what Maru could bring to the table, and if Clem’s PvT could really cut it in a high stakes, WC tier playoff match, I didn’t get to.
Well, I think we have to agree to disagree here about the favorite thing. But even if some people still considered Serral the favorite in every tournament back then, it definitely was far from an unanimous opinion.
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EPT
